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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Shrimp Alive and Growing in Benton County Indiana!

Yep, There he/she is. A salt water shrimp living right here in Benton County. Actually, there are quite a few of these creatures living in our county at RDM Farms LLC right off of State Road 18! I am a huge shrimp lover and have been dying to get over there to sample some, so a few weeks ago, I finally did it! Come take the tour with me!

Look for these flags just off St. Rd. 18 in one of the few hilly parts we have in our county.

It's on the south side of the road.

Back here, inside the red barn/building.

Here are the times to shoot for:

RDM Farms is operated and owned by Darryl and Karlanea Brown, with son Levi and Darryl's mom Marie helping. It was the third indoor facility to sell saltwater shrimp in the country, and now there are SIX in Indiana! Darryl and Karleana thought about raising tilapia first, but shrimp proved to be a more economical way to go, and they take a shorter amount of time to raise from start to finish. The day I visited, I learned that Hurricane Isaac just missed the place in the Florida Keys that supplies the Browns with their baby shirmp! Whew!

Here they are about 25 days old and almost ready to be moved to the juvenile tanks. Their water is moved with them so their environment is disrupted as little as possible

This is a nursery tank kept at a balmy 90 degrees. There are about 17,000 shrimp in a tank, and the Browns are averaging around 90% survival from start to finish with their shrimp.

These are the bigger tanks, or if you look closely you can call them pools! The nets are used to try and prevent any jumpers from getting out. Some still do, and the Browns have two bait stores that buy these jumpers for the area fishermen. NO WASTE!

The water is brown because there is a special "good" bacteria in it that consumes the shrimp's ammonia and waste. The water is constantly kept moving through a Zero Exchange aerobic heterotrophic system.

The water is recycled in this gray tub and reused. Karleana said that they have been able to use the same water for two years because of this system. No waste of water!

This stone also helps keep the water clean. The air goes through the stone, and the resulting bubbles release C02.

Shells from shrimp that die are kept and sent to the Universities of South Carolina and Alabama to be used in research for calcium sources, diabetes research, and rope making.

The shrimp go through five different kinds of feed! The first one is in liquid form, and then they graduate to solid pellets that grow in size as the shrimp also grow. Karleana tells me that shrimp are exactly what they eat. It's good to know these guys are getting great food in very clean water!

Here is the price board just inside the building so you can see all your options. There are also several recipe cards to take home with you and try!

Yes! Those of you who know the Browns for their hot house plants, will be happy to know that they still sell a few of those too!

Thanks so much to Karleana for giving me the grand tour of this new facility. Will all the plans in the works, I truly believe it will become a great asset to our county and help develop the business of aquiculture throughout our state!